VB-sponsored book group…open to all
Join the "chatter"!  Bring your tea or latte, and come discuss contemporary lit. with Sittrea and the Afternoon Book Chat on the 2nd Wednesday of each month at 1pm.
Authors DO NOT attend.

The Elegance of the Hedgehog by Muriel Barbery

In this enthralling international bestseller, two girls live inconspicuous lives in the center of an elegant Paris apartment building.  It is only when a stranger moves into their building—and sees through the girls’ disguises—that Paloma and Rene discover their kindred spirits.

Corbin shares the bumpy road that led her to motherhood and her career as a writer. Deformed sperm, a miscarriage, and quitting her job to become an editor only to have that publication become bankrupt were a few hurdles that she crossed along the way. But Corbin not only survives, she thrives, and is able to share her story in a heartfelt and humorous way. 

Corbin Lewars’ work can be read in numerous publications, including Hip Mama, Mothering, and Midwifery Today. She was the editor of Verve and Mamaphiles #3, and is the founder of the zine Reality Mom, currently in its seventh year of publishing. She lives in Seattle with her two children.

After brisk sales and numerous award, Massacred for Gold is already in its second printing.  This is the first authoritative account of the 1887 massacre of up to 34 Chinese gold miners in Hells Canyon. The killers were an improbable gang of Oregon horse thieves and schoolboys, motivated by racial hatred and the prospect of easy fortune.  None of them were held accountable.

Veteran journalist Greg Nokes exposes a century-long cover-up of the crime by a white population which cared more about protecting the reputations of the killers and their families than solving the worst crime committed by whites against 19th century Chinese immigrants.

Join us at 6pm for a Tango demonstration and the opportunity to try tango!  Put on your dancing shoes and come to Village Books at 6pm.  Rebecca Niemier, and dancers from Rebecca's Tango Life will demonstrate various tango steps and YOU will have a chance to try tango if you like!  Author Maria Finn may even join in the dance . . .

 As exhilarating as the Tango itself, the story whirls us into the center of the ballroom dancing craze. Buoyed by the author's humor and passion, it imparts surprising insights about how to get on with life after you've lost in love.  Maria Finn's husband was cheating. First she threw him out. Then she cried. Then she signed up for tango lessons. It turns out that tango has a lot to teach about understanding love and loss, about learning how to follow and how to lead, how to live with style and flair, take risks, and sort out what it is you really want. As Maria's world begins to revolve around the friendships she makes in dance class and the milongas (social dances) she attends regularly in NYC, we discover with her the fascinating culture, history, music, moves, and beauty of the Argentine tango. With each new dance step she learns—the embrace, the walk, the sweep, the exit—she is one step closer to returning to the world of the living.  Eventually Maria travels to Buenos Aires, the birthplace of tango, and finds the confidence to try romance again.

Maria Finn has written for Audubon Magazine, Saveur, Metropolis, the New York Times, and the Los Angeles Times, and her essays have been anthologized in Best Food Writing and The Best Women's Travel Writing.

*Join us at 6pm for a Tango demonstration and the opportunity to try tango.  Put on your dancing shoes and come to Village Books at 6pm.  Rebecca Niemier, and dancers from Rebecca's Tango Life will demonstrate various tango steps and YOU will have a chance to try tango if you like!

Enter the Heartbreak Competition by sharing your tale of heartbreak!

Featuring the author’s recommended trails for winter hiking throughout Western Washington, the Winter Hikes Deck is a versatile pack of outdoor options. From low-land routes and rainforest rambles, to coastal tramps and protected peaks, each card features a route description on one side and a map on the other. The deck includes 13 never-before-published hikes. Several additional cards provide essentials for winter hiking, an index of hikes, and information on winter flora and fauna.

Craig Romano is an avid hiker, runner, kayaker, and cyclist. He’s written for many publications and is co-creator of Hikeoftheweek.com.  He is the author of Best Hikes With Dogs Inland Northwest, Columbia Highlands: Exploring Washington’s Last Frontier, as well as Day Hiking: Olympic Peninsula, Day Hiking: North Cascades, and Day Hiking: Central Cascades. Craig lives in Mount Vernon.

VB Reads…Engaged Citizens Book Group    Authors DO NOT attend.
Join Mary Dumas in the Readings Gallery on the 3rd Wednesday of each month to discuss books exploring how to create a more civil and engaged community. Brown bag lunches encouraged. Anyone interested in exploring their role as an engaged citizen is welcome.

The Innovator's Dilemma: The Revolutionary Book That Will Change the Way You Do Business, By Clayton Christensen

In this revolutionary business book, Harvard professor Christensen demonstrates why outstanding companies that do everything right still lose their market leadership when confronted with disruptive changes in technology and market structure. He tells how to avoid a similar fate as businesses race online into the 21st century.

An Indie-Next Selection for February 2010! 

Fundamentalism meets deep ecology in this unusual memoir.  The author’s childhood in the high Sierra with her forest ranger father led her to embrace the entire natural world, while her Southern Baptist relatives prepared eagerly and busily to leave the world.  Peterson survived fierce “sword drill” competitions demanding total recall of the Scriptures and awkward dinner table questions (“Will Rapture take the cat, too?”) only to find that environmentalists with prophecies of doom can also be Endtimers.  Peterson paints such a hilarious, loving portrait of each world that the reader, too, may want to be Left Behind.

Brenda Peterson is a nature writer and novelist, author of 15 books, including a New York Times “Notable Book of the Year,” Duck and Cover. Her memoir, Build Me an Ark: A Life with Animals, was chosen as a “Best Spiritual Book of 2001,” a One Spirit and Quality Paperback Club book, and is just out in a Chinese edition. Her ten non-fiction books, including Living by Water and the National Geographic book, Sightings: The Gray Whale’s Mysterious Journey established her as a prominent creative non-fiction writer, extensively profiled in America’s Nature Writers.

Brenda Peterson’s non-fiction has appeared in The New York Times, Chicago Tribune, San Francisco Chronicle, Reader’s Digest, Christian Science Monitor, and Utne Reader. Her work is featured in national magazines, including Sierra, Oprah magazine, and Orion: People and Nature. She is a frequent columnist for the Seattle Times and since 1993 she has contributed environmental commentary for both Seattle National Public Radio stations. Since 1980, Peterson has taught writing in universities and privately.

For the past two decades, Peterson has studied and written about animals, especially marine mammals and wolves. She is the founder of the grassroots conservation group Seal Sitters, based in Seattle.

With Toni Frohoff, she co-edited the Sierra Club anthology Between Species: Celebrating the Dolphin-Human Bond. Her bestselling anthology Intimate Nature: The Bond Between Women and Animals is often taught in university courses.

Groundbreaking, empowering, and inspiring, this is James’ chronicle of how his unorthodox education brought him success, and how anyone – from children struggling in school to professionals looking to jump-start their careers – can become educated on their own terms.

When James Bach was just 24 years old, he told a classroom of at risk kids, “Education is important. School is not. I didn’t need school. Neither do you.” And James should know. At the age of 14, James, son of Richard Bach (bestselling author of the 1970s classic Jonathan Livingston Seagull), dropped out of school because it was “interfering” with his education. To James, it wasn’t just a waste of time, he felt he was using his own time against himself. This was a seemingly radical idea for someone who would go on to become one of the youngest technical managers at Apple Computers and an internationally-recognized expert in the field of computer software testing.

Here James strongly advocates the importance of “unschooling”—considering himself not a student but rather a “Buccaneer-Scholar.” To James, a buccanneer-scholar is a person “whose love of learning is not muzzled, yoked or shackled by any institution or authority and whose mind is driven to wander and find its own voice and place in the world.”

The volatility of today’s job market and the limitless opportunities afforded by the internet have forever changed people's attitudes about schooling. In this world of rapid technological development, people are becoming successful, making money and finding personal satisfaction through non-traditional means. Ideas have become more important than training; innovation is more important than credentials. The ability to educate oneself — to learn how to learn — is crucial.

With Secrets of a Bunccaneer Scholar, James doesn’t seek to eliminate schools but he does want to deconstruct the belief that formal education is the only path to a great education. In his uniquely pithy and anecdotal style, James outlines the eleven elements of his self-education method and shows how every reader — simply by investing time and passion into educating themselves about the things that really interest them — can develop a method for acquiring knowledge and expertise that fits their temperaments and enhances their unique abilities and skills.

     When small-time criminal Albert Lethewood is murdered, he leaves his daughter Astrid a house in the town of Indigo Springs. Suspecting a scam, she nevertheless moves in. . .  and there discovers a cache of magical objects. With the help of two friends: dependable, heroic Jacks Glade and volatile Sahara Knax, she works to puzzle out the nature and purpose of the magical objects.  But Albert's killer is still out there. Worse, the mystical power is deeply seductive. . . and Sahara might be willing to risk everything, even Astrid herself, if she can control the emerging power.

     A.M. Dellamonica is a writer from Vancouver, B.C. whose short fiction has been appearing in science fiction magazines and anthologies since the 1990s.  She teaches writing through the UCLA Extension Writers' Program.

When does a lie become the truth? Walk the blurry line between truth and lies…hear a selection of local students read their own stories of deception.  This event is inspired by Tobias Wolff’s book Old School. The program is an initiative of the National Endowment for the Arts in partnership with the Institute of Museum and Library Services and Arts Midwest and supported, in part, by a grant from the Paul G. Allen Family Foundation.

Refreshments will be served and the first 50 attendees will receive a copy of Deception.

An Indie Next Selection for February 2010!

Durrow’s award-winning debut novel tells the story of Rachel, the daughter of a Danish mother and a black G.I. who becomes the sole survivor of a family tragedy. With her strict African American grandmother as her new guardian, Rachel moves to a mostly black community, where her light brown skin, blue eyes, and beauty bring mixed attention her way. Growing up in the 1980s, she learns to swallow her overwhelming grief and confronts her identity as a biracial young woman in a world that wants to see her as either black or white. In the tradition of Jamaica Kincaid's Annie John and Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye, here is a portrait of a young girl and society's ideas of race, class, and beauty. It is the winner of the Bellwether Prize for best fiction manuscript addressing issues of social justice.

Heidi W. Durrow has won the Lorian Hemingway Short Story Competition and the Chapter One Fiction Contest. She has received grants from the New York Foundation for the Arts, the American Scandinavian Foundation, and the Lois Roth Endowment and a Fellowship for Emerging Writers from the Jerome Foundation. Her writing has been published in Alaska Quarterly Review, The Literary Review, and others.

Note: The February Open Mic will be on Wednesday, February 24th at 7pm.

Presentation Includes Slide Show!

This book explores the watershed and urban ecologies of the Northern Cascades, the Olympic Peninsula, and the Olympic Coast waterways on both sides of Interstate 5, a major artery of industrial-urban growth, as the author sea kayaks the lakes, rivers, estuaries, deltas, bays and inlets coursing into the Puget Sound and into the Pacific Ocean.

Dan Baharav is an avid outdoorsman traveling the Pacific Ocean waterways in his sea kayak. He holds a Ph.D. in Zoology and Ecology and for the last forty years he has held both academic and consulting posts. His focus is on applying contemporary ecological theories to multi-purpose use of natural resources.  Currently, he resides in Bellingham.

Village Books invites everyone to enjoy local talents as they share their written words. Not published?  No worries.  Feel free to share some of your own writing!  Sign up at our main counter on the first floor.  Laurel Leigh, story writing instructor at Whatcom Community College, will host.

Please note: For this month only Open Mic will happen on a Wednesday night in order to accommodate an author event on Monday.  In March, Open Mic will return to it's usual Monday night slot. 

This is a “must have” for every gardener!  By offering an easy visual system for diagnosing any plant malady—and matching it to the right, organic, cure—plant problems will be a thing of the past.  If you can see it, you can fix it! 

Authors David Deardorff and Kathryn Wadsworth have culminated their lives’ work into this one indispensable resource.  They own a landscape design and garden coaching firm in Port Townsend, and Deardorff is also a plant pathologist and botanist.

In post-Soviet Russia, Tanya carries a notebook wherever she goes, recording her observations and her dreams of finding love. As she scrambles to hold onto her dreams, along the way she discovers that love may have been waiting in her own courtyard all along.

Gina Ochsner is the author of two collections of short stories, People I Wanted to Be and The Necessary Grace to Fall, both of which won the Oregon Book Award.  Her work has appeared in The New Yorker, The Best American Nonrequired Reading, Glimmer Train, and many others.  She is a recipient of the Flannery O'Connor Award, the Ruth Hindman Foundation Prize, Guggenheim and NEA grants, and the Raymond Carver Prize.  She lives in Keizer, Oregon.

VB Reads...Feminist Book Group -- Village Books Reading Group!
Join Jen, on the last Sunday of every month to discuss and explore feminism in a fun, empowering environment.  Open to anyone who wants to explore feminism. 
Authors DO NOT ATTEND.

American Romances by Rebecca Brown
This collection of mordant, poignant, and playful essays shows Brown at the height of her imaginative and intuitive powers.

A wry, incisive social and literary critique is couched in a gonzo mix of pop culture, autobiography, fiction, literary history, misremembered movie plots, and fantasy that plays with the notion of what it is to be “American.” Fantastical connections and unlikely meetings span the course of America’s cultural history in a manic remix, featuring appearances by Brian Wilson, Gertrude Stein, Nathaniel Hawthorne, the Invisible Man, the Abligensian Crusade, John Wayne, Felix Mendelssohn, JFK, Shane, and God.

VB Reads…General Literature
Join Cindi to discuss books from a variety of genres the 1st Monday of each month at 7pm.
Authors DO NOT attend.

Wandering Star, by Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clzio

Wandering Star is the story of two young women, one uprooted by the Holocaust and the other by the founding of the state of Israel. Bearing witness to the boundless strength of the spirit, and based on his own experience as a child in World War II, J.M.G. Le Clezio chronicles the saga of a young girl, Esther, who, in a small mountain village north of Nice occupied by Italian forces, learns what it means to be Jewish in wartime Europe. A quiet young teenager, she suffers the loss of her beloved father and, with her mother, is forced to flee advancing German troops.

At war's end, Esther and her mother make an arduous journey to Jerusalem, where their path crosses with a group of displaced refugees, including Nejma, a Palestinian girl whose story of life in the camps balances Esther's own tale of suffering and survival. Esther and Nejma never meet again, but in their respective exiles, they are forever haunted by the memory of one another. Wandering Star is a powerful coming-of-age story that offers a luminous lesson in humanity.

LeWarne tells the compelling story of a group of idealistic seekers whose quest for a communal life grounded in love, service, and obedience to a charismatic leader foundered when that leader's power distanced him from his followers. With both sympathy and balance, LeWarne describes the Family's  daily life in the urban and later the rural communes, and explains the Family's deeply felt spiritual beliefs. The Seattle Times called the book "well-documented and readable, an intimate look at an intentional family of more than 35 years."

Join Janet Ott the 1st Wednesday of each month (12:00-1:00pm). Meetings are in the Readings Gallery.  Brown bag lunches are encouraged.
Authors DO NOT attend.

Outliers: the Story of Success, by Malcolm Gladwell

In this landmark work, the author of Blink and The Tipping Point asks what makes high-achievers different?  Brilliant and entertaining, Outliers is a landmark work that will simultaneously delight and illuminate.

“So when are you two going to have kids?”

“Aren’t you lonesome without children?”
“Why won’t you make me a grandparent?”

These are just a few of the questions childfree adults hear, sometimes creating anxiety, self-doubt and guilt. Having children is a personal choice requiring careful consideration, not an automatic response to the social pressure of a child-oriented world. Written by a childfree psychologist for those considering the option of having children or not, this book features highly personal stories of others facing this decision and the psychological processes that influence them. The reader will gain useful, unbiased information on how to deal with the problems and possibilities faced as a result of being childfree. The purpose of this book is encouraging readers to accept their situations and find ways to have the richest, most fulfilling life possible.  The author will donate a percentage of the proceeds from this book to Mt. Baker Planned Parenthood, because "being wanted and loved is the right of every child."  

Ellen L. Walker received her Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology from Seattle Pacific University, and has a busy psychology practice in Bellingham. Dr. Walker and her psychologist husband, Chris, enjoy an adventure-filled life with their two terriers, Bella and Scuppers.

Read the Bellingham Herald interview with Ellen by clicking here. 

JOIN US FOR THIS EVENT WITH NATIONAL BOOK AWARD AND NEWBERY HONOR AWARD WINNER, POLLY HORVATH!

Northward to the Moon: Jane and her family have moved to Canada . . . but not for long. When her stepfather, Ned, is fired from his job as a high school French teacher (seems he doesn't speak French), the family packs up and Jane embarks on a series of new adventures. At first, she imagines her family as a gang of outlaws, riding on horseback in masks, robbing trains, and traveling all the way to Mexico. But the reality is different: Setting off by car, they visit the tribe of Native Americans with whom Ned once lived, head to Las Vegas in search of Ned's magician brother, and wind up spending the summer with his eccentric mother on her ranch out west. As Jane lives through it all-developing a crush on a ranch hand, reevaluating her relationship with Ned, watching her sister Maya's painful growing up-she sees her world, which used to be so safe and secure, shift in strange and inconvenient ways.

My One Hundred Adventures: The winner of a National Book Award, a Newbery Honor, and countless other awards has written her richest, most spirited book yet, filled with characters that readers will love, and never forget. Twelve-year-old Jane is ready for adventures, to move beyond the world of her siblings and single mother and their house by the sea, and step into the "know-not what." And, over the summer, adventures do seem to find Jane, whether it's a thrilling ride in a hot-air balloon, the appearances of a slew of possible fathers, or a weird new friendship with a preacher and psychic wannabe. Most important, there's Jane's discovery of what lies at the heart of all great adventures: that it's not what happens to you that matters, but what you learn about yourself.

Polly Horvath is one of the most highly acclaimed authors writing today. Among her many books are The Canning Season (recipient of the National Book Award and the YA Canadian Book of the Year), Everything on a Waffle (a Newbery Honor Book), and The Trolls (a National Book Award Finalist). Her books have been chosen by Publishers Weekly, School Library Journal, The Chicago Tribune, and The Washington Post as Best Books of the Year, and by Booklist and Kirkus as Editors' Choices. She has won numerous Parents' Choice Awards as well as many other prizes and honors. Polly lives in British Columbia with her husband, Arnie Keller; daughters Emily and Rebecca Keller; horse, Zayda; and dog, Keena.

VB Reads…Lesbian Book Group
Join Gabrielle for discussions of literary books by & about lesbians on the 1st Sunday of every month at 2 pm.  Authors DO NOT attend.
Olivia, by Dorothy Strachey

Considered one of the most subtle and beautifully written lesbian novels of the 20th century, Dorothy Strachey's 1949 classic classic Olivia captures the awakening passions of an English adolescent sent away for a year to a small finishing school outside Paris. The innocent but watchful Olivia develops an infatuation for her headmistress, Mlle. Julie, and through this screen of love observes the tense romance between Mlle. Julie and the other head of the school, Mlle. Cara, in its final months.  Although not strictly autobiographical, Olivia draws on the author's experiences at finishing schools run by the charismatic Mlle. Marie Souvestre, whose influence lived on through former students like Natalie Barney and Eleanor Roosevelt. Olivia was dedicated to the memory of Strachey's friend Virginia Woolf and published to acclaim in 1949. Colette wrote the screenplay for the 1951 film adaptation of the novel. In 1999, Olivia was included on the Publishing Triangle's widely publicized list of the 100 Best Gay and Lesbian Novels of the 20th Century.

Pilot, navigator, engineer, doctor, scientist—ship’s cat? All are essential to the well-staffed space vessel, as we see in Anne McCaffrey and Elizabeth Ann Scarborough’s Catalyst.  Elizabeth Ann Scarborough, winner of the Nebula Award for her novel The Healer’s War, is the author of numerous fantasy novels. She has co-authored ten other novels with Anne McCaffrey. She lives on the Olympic Peninsula in Washington State.

Reading through this collection of poems one senses the evolution and the essence of this prolific, independent press. There is its unique focus on the Midwestern experience as told from the inside. And within this there is the truth-telling of the ache and the joy of hard work in a distinct landscape. These revelations of personal dreams and histories simmer together to become a larger story, the collective voice that echoes through the 25 years of this press's existence and production. One begins to taste, to smell, to hear and touch this specific region, and its soul is evoked into recognition. Our own experience of our world deepens, carried by the current of words and rhythms each poet contributes to this chorus of lives fully lived.

"What consolation is there in growing old, in such loss?" asks Ann Putnam, who was witness and caregiver to her mother, father, and her father's twin brother as they reached old age and eventually died. Full Moon at Noontide is also her story, as she helps these elders move first into a retirement community and then through illnesses and hospice.  

"Old age, death and impermanence—it seems at first glance impossible to make a reader see these timeless and universal experiences with fresh eyes, but Ann Putnam's luminous prose achieves that miracle and more, transforming pain, suffering, and loss into a literary gift of beauty and redemption." - Charles Johnson, author of Middle Passage and winner of the 1990 National Book Award.

Ann Putnam teaches creative writing and women’s studies at the University of Puget Sound in Tacoma. She has published short fiction, personal essays, literary criticism, and book reviews in various anthologies such as Hemingway and Women: Female Critics and the Female Voice, and in journals, including the Hemingway Review, Western American Literature, and the South Dakota Review.

VB Reads... Afternoon Book Chat  
VB-sponsored book group…open to all.  Join the "chatter"!  Bring your tea or latte, and come discuss contemporary lit. with Sittrea and the Afternoon Book Chat on the 2nd Wednesday of each month at 1pm.
Authors DO NOT attend.

Sweeping Up Glass, by Carolyn D. Wall

Someone is hunting wolves behind the grocery where Olivia ekes out a living; soon she and her grandson become prey as well. Olivia must encounter her own uncomfortable past to save herself and the boy, in this stunning debut set in Depression-era Kentucky.

This is a powerful debut novel about Lydia Pasternak, a precocious fifteen-year-old whose life—for better or worse—is irrevocably changed when her older brother, Danny, disappears. In the year following Danny's disappearance, his parents go off the rails, his town buzzes with self-indulgent mourning, and his little sister Lydia finds herself thrust into unwanted celebrity, forced to negotiate her complicated—often ambivalent —grief for a brother she never particularly liked but who is suddenly gone.  Embraced by Danny’s friends, forgotten by her parents, and drawn into the missing-person investigation by her family’s intriguing private eye, Lydia both blossoms and struggles to find herself during Danny’s absence. But when a trail of clues leads to a shocking outcome in her brother’s case, the teenaged Lydia and the adult she will become are forever changed, even as she reluctantly prepares to return to her hometown ten years later.  An honest look at how a crisis affects the daily life of one family in suburban America, The Local News is a haunting narrative that explores the complicated bond between siblings and proves that not all tragedies have a hero.

Miriam Gershow graduated from the Program in Creative Writing at the University of Oregon and was a Fiction Fellow at the Wisconsin Institute for Creative Writing. Her stories have appeared in the Georgia Review, Black Warrior Review, and Quarterly West, among other literary journals. She lives in Eugene, Oregon, where she teaches in the English Department at The University of Oregon.